Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer and former Councilwoman Katrina Foley discuss the pros and cons of the proposed charter for Costa Mesa during the Feet to the Fire forum at the Costa Mesa Community Center Monday night.

Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer with a binder of city ordinances that he says will still be operative if the proposed city charter passes Nov. 6.

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Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer and former Councilwoman Katrina Foley, right, discuss the pros and cons of the proposed charter for Costa Mesa during the Feet to the Fire forum at the community center Monday night. At left are journalists Norberto Santana and Roger Bloom.

Former Councilwoman Katrina Foley weighs in on the pros and cons of the proposed charter for Costa Mesa during the Feet to the Fire Forum at the community center Monday night. Foley believes the proposed charter lacks substance.

Register columnist Barbara Venezia grills Costa Mesa council member Jim Righeimer and former Councilwoman Katrina Foley on the pros and cons of the proposed charter for Costa Mesa.

We had a rowdy Feet to the Fire forum on the proposed Costa Mesa city charter on Monday night. I think there was less controversy at the Constitutional Convention.

There’s not much question what the pro-charter side stands for. If passed, Measure V would allow the City Council to more easily continue the course it has set under Councilman Jim Righeimer: outsourcing of city jobs at lower wages and bargaining hard with employees to reduce pension benefits. Righeimer could not have been more clear about that Monday.

There seems, however, to be two lines of thought about why Measure V should be defeated.

One is the argument articulated Monday by former Councilwoman Katrina Foley that there’s not enough in the charter. “Simplistic,” she called it. The other side of the anti-Measure V argument is that there’s too much in it. That side wasn’t represented at the forum, and I take some blame. I’d been asked whether I thought a union rep should participate. My opinion was no, keep it local. I figured Foley or whomever the anti-V people sent would vigorously represent all sides of the anti-V argument.

But Foley didn’t. When the talk turned to a key provision in the proposed charter that the city no longer has to pay prevailing wages for public-works projects, Foley was a lukewarm defender of the prevailing wage concept. While she allowed that certain kinds of projects called for the “highest quality” of workmanship, she said, “the reason to oppose this charter is not about prevailing wages.”

I should have pushed for a labor rep on the panel because unions are jumping into the anti-charter campaign with more fervor than I anticipated. Already they’ve marshaled $158,000 – most of it from out-of-town unions – and there’s still a month to go. By contrast, the pro-charter side has raised $22,000. With so much skin in the game, the unions should have been there, and I apologize.

Foley says her biggest fear is what’s not in the charter: no limit on levying “exorbitant fines” or any other requirement for city commissions. She doesn’t think it would require putting contracts out to bid (although Righeimer says it would). Some of her fears are far-fetched, but some are possible if you believe the worst about the council majority.

Foley is correct when she says a better charter (or at least a more politically acceptable one) would have been produced by a committee – in powdered wigs, I’m thinking, toiling for a long, hot summer in the room over Gary Monahan‘s pub. But that’s not the document we have before us. Ultimately it gets down to whether you trust the competence and integrity of the council to follow state and city laws – which won’t go away if Measure V passes. Pretty simple.

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